...a little bit louder and a little bit worse.
Also known as, This weekend I have to write ten more pages of my thesis.
10:39 AM: 0 pages
11:32 AM: 1 page Also: 1 cup of coffee made.
12:14 PM: 2 pages After I write one more page, I get to make pancakes and eat them. Yes. Motivation.
12:40 PM: 3 pages PANCAKES.
1:45 PM: 3 pages I am now full of pancake. Onwards! (The plan: after I reach 6 pages I take a shower.)
2:31 PM: 4 pages An interesting side effect of this "blog your thesis" plan is that I am unintentionally keeping a record of how long it takes me to write each page of this thing. Apparently I average a little under an hour per page. Adding in breaks for coffee and food, I should have completed this week's thesis portion in 6 hours. I'm not sure if this is comforting or intimidating. Something tells me I won't be finished by 8:30 tonight. At least it's only Saturday, I guess.
2:54: 5 pages HAHA I prove myself wrong, but in the best way possible! Excellent. Half-way to being done with this for the weekend! (Which is... half-way to being half-way, which is... 37.5%, I think?) Yesssssss. Now let's just hope I don't run out of steam. (One more page until I get to shower...)
3:20: 6 pages I AM ON A ROLL. However, since I am also still in my pyjamas, I am going to go shower. I have decided that if I finish two more pages (for a total of EIGHT written today) and it's still light and not unreasonably cold outside, I will go shopping. And possibly buy myself something nice. Something nice, and useless. And then I will come home and write two more pages. Yes.
3:58: 6 pages Starting up again! I hope.
4:43: 7 pages At this point I am just sort of outlining because I've written all I can without actually doing any sort of analysis (oops). The outlining is still helpful, however. And comforting in how many pages it takes up. I should start the acoustic analysis portion of this disaster tomorrow, because I can't deal with it today...
5:14: 8 pages GOAL REACHED. I can now join the land of the living. Hopefully more tonight! With the added bonus of actual analysis. Maybe.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Whine bitch moan, moving right along
Things that are not helpful in the thesis process:
Having to email all the people in the department who are supposed to be "supporting me" and "mentoring me" on a weekly basis and begin the email with, "Hi again, ____, I'm sorry to bug you about this but I was wondering if you had the ______ you mentioned last week to send to me..." or, "Like I said before, I'd really like to come in and meet with you, please let me know if you're available on Thursday afternoon," or, "I was wondering if you'd thought about the question I emailed you about last week," all the while including the entire chain of emails leading up to this one I have sent that have gone unanswered in an attempt to GUILT these people into replying to/helping me.
ARGH.
If I had more time I would just stalk them at their offices, but I can't even do that.
I know writing a thesis is supposed to be difficult, but my god sometimes it feels like I'm talking to ROCKS. Really unresponsive rocks.
Having to email all the people in the department who are supposed to be "supporting me" and "mentoring me" on a weekly basis and begin the email with, "Hi again, ____, I'm sorry to bug you about this but I was wondering if you had the ______ you mentioned last week to send to me..." or, "Like I said before, I'd really like to come in and meet with you, please let me know if you're available on Thursday afternoon," or, "I was wondering if you'd thought about the question I emailed you about last week," all the while including the entire chain of emails leading up to this one I have sent that have gone unanswered in an attempt to GUILT these people into replying to/helping me.
ARGH.
If I had more time I would just stalk them at their offices, but I can't even do that.
I know writing a thesis is supposed to be difficult, but my god sometimes it feels like I'm talking to ROCKS. Really unresponsive rocks.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
I should have expected this
First of all, this post is brought to you by the fact that there is no hot water in my building. So, instead of taking a shower, I am posting on the internet. My priorities, let me show you them.
So! Part of the requirements of the grant I received to write my thesis is presenting at a research conference in April. I have to apply for the conference by tomorrow. At the end of the application, there are these instructions: "Please check up to four categories under which your project would fit." My options are as follows.
New York City: Longstanding Challenges and Dynamic Change
The Politics and Economics of Education
Gender Studies: A Global View
Contemporary Global Conflict
Global Issues Past and Present
The International Workforce: Issues in Labor and Economics
Issues in Law, Justice, and Government
Neural Science
Health and Development: Science at the Crossroads
Social Concerns in Health Care
Molecules of Living Systems
Interpersonal Relationships
Literature Through the Ages
Learning and Behavior in Mammals
Access to the Arts: Displaying, Preserving, Performing, and Interpreting
Music: Tradition Meets Innovation
The Urban Divide
Molecules and Materials
Of course, my project fits into not a single one of these neat little categories. Currently I think my best options are "Learning and Behavior in Mammals" (humans are mammals and speech is a behavior, right?) or "Gender Studies: A Global View" (the preferred option to just completely mess with this whole process).
MY MAJOR: Defying categorization since the 1970s!
(Disclaimer: I have edited this thing like 5 times already for typos. It's early and I HAVEN'T SHOWERED so I get a free pass on my not-so-awesome writing skills right now, okay? Okay.)
So! Part of the requirements of the grant I received to write my thesis is presenting at a research conference in April. I have to apply for the conference by tomorrow. At the end of the application, there are these instructions: "Please check up to four categories under which your project would fit." My options are as follows.
New York City: Longstanding Challenges and Dynamic Change
The Politics and Economics of Education
Gender Studies: A Global View
Contemporary Global Conflict
Global Issues Past and Present
The International Workforce: Issues in Labor and Economics
Issues in Law, Justice, and Government
Neural Science
Health and Development: Science at the Crossroads
Social Concerns in Health Care
Molecules of Living Systems
Interpersonal Relationships
Literature Through the Ages
Learning and Behavior in Mammals
Access to the Arts: Displaying, Preserving, Performing, and Interpreting
Music: Tradition Meets Innovation
The Urban Divide
Molecules and Materials
Of course, my project fits into not a single one of these neat little categories. Currently I think my best options are "Learning and Behavior in Mammals" (humans are mammals and speech is a behavior, right?) or "Gender Studies: A Global View" (the preferred option to just completely mess with this whole process).
MY MAJOR: Defying categorization since the 1970s!
(Disclaimer: I have edited this thing like 5 times already for typos. It's early and I HAVEN'T SHOWERED so I get a free pass on my not-so-awesome writing skills right now, okay? Okay.)
Sunday, February 13, 2011
This sort of worked last time
So. Today I am writing the first ten pages of my thesis. Not the actual first ten pages, of course, just any ten pages. It must happen, because I have A Plan to get this thing written, and apparently public embarrassment is enough of a motivating factor. Because if I can't bang out ten double-spaced pages of bullshit about something I know a lot about today, what does it say about me that just this weekend I wrote 10,000 words of a gratuitously musical short story for my creative writing class like it was nothing? I have my priorities straight, is what it says.
SO HERE'S HOW IT'S GOING TO GO.
1:00 PM: 0 pages. It begins.
1:14 PM: 1 page I copy-pasted part of my funding application into a word document entitled, I kid you not, "THESIS - WHAT." It counts, though. ONWARDS.
1:23 PM: 2 pages More copy-paste, this time from an email conversation I had with my adviser. If only this entire process would go this quickly! On another note, I have realized I don't actually know how to write a thesis. For my methodology, can I include a list of all my target words and sentences? That'll take up four more pages. Awesome.
1:31 PM: 3 pages THIS IS AWESOME. I copy-paste stuff I have already written, change it to double-space, tweak it a little, look up, and BAM there's another page. Bizarre, yet amazing.
1:37 PM: 4 pages Copy-pasted my wordlist in here. No wonder so many people plagiarize from the internet, this is the easiest thing I've ever done. Bonus points because I'm plagiarizing from myself. This Methodology section is kick-ass.
2:26 PM: 5 pages This last page came entirely from my own brain, which is why it took so long. But now I am officially one-tenth of the way there! I'm not sure if I'm excited or daunted by this number. Both, perhaps.
And now I am going to go take a break and shower. I'm hoping to get another five pages by the end of the day. WE SHALL SEE.
3:28 PM: 5 pages I am out of the shower with another mug of tea after my break. Now begins Thesis Sunday, Part 2: Electric Boogaloo. HERE WE GO.
4:19 PM: 6 pages I have been listening to the Kyrie eleison section of the Mozart Requiem on repeat for the past hour. It is simultaneously comforting in its familiarity and utterly terrifying each time a new "Kyrie" section starts. Basically excellent motivation, really.
4:56 PM: 7 pages Yes, seven pages, THAT'S RIGHT. However, to disabuse you of the notion that I am actually succeeding in this, I present you with an excerpt of what I have just written. (Know that, when I am writing, I write notes to myself in all caps so that I will see them when I go back and do some editing. I have a recurring nightmare in which I submit a paper and I have forgotten to go through and take out all the side-notes. You will soon see why.)
It is well known in THE FIELD OF WHAT that in many dialects of English the presence of a nasal consonant will raise the vowel it precedes or follows. Pre-nasal vowels will often take on a nasal quality even though English does not have nasal vowels, only oral ones. ALSO I SHOULD CITE THINGS HERE. LIKE PAPERS. OR SOMETHING. The presence of a nasal consonant causes the speaker to lower the velum to allow air to pass through both the nose and the mouth. Through the process of WHAT - ASSIMILATION? ARGH PHONETICS most speakers of American English will leave the velum at least partially lowered when articulating a vowel when it is immediately near a nasal consonant, producing a semi-nasalized vowel. This effect is generally most notable in pre-nasal vowels. UM, THEN I PUT ACTUAL WORK HERE?
Yes, really.
SO HERE'S HOW IT'S GOING TO GO.
1:00 PM: 0 pages. It begins.
1:14 PM: 1 page I copy-pasted part of my funding application into a word document entitled, I kid you not, "THESIS - WHAT." It counts, though. ONWARDS.
1:23 PM: 2 pages More copy-paste, this time from an email conversation I had with my adviser. If only this entire process would go this quickly! On another note, I have realized I don't actually know how to write a thesis. For my methodology, can I include a list of all my target words and sentences? That'll take up four more pages. Awesome.
1:31 PM: 3 pages THIS IS AWESOME. I copy-paste stuff I have already written, change it to double-space, tweak it a little, look up, and BAM there's another page. Bizarre, yet amazing.
1:37 PM: 4 pages Copy-pasted my wordlist in here. No wonder so many people plagiarize from the internet, this is the easiest thing I've ever done. Bonus points because I'm plagiarizing from myself. This Methodology section is kick-ass.
2:26 PM: 5 pages This last page came entirely from my own brain, which is why it took so long. But now I am officially one-tenth of the way there! I'm not sure if I'm excited or daunted by this number. Both, perhaps.
And now I am going to go take a break and shower. I'm hoping to get another five pages by the end of the day. WE SHALL SEE.
3:28 PM: 5 pages I am out of the shower with another mug of tea after my break. Now begins Thesis Sunday, Part 2: Electric Boogaloo. HERE WE GO.
4:19 PM: 6 pages I have been listening to the Kyrie eleison section of the Mozart Requiem on repeat for the past hour. It is simultaneously comforting in its familiarity and utterly terrifying each time a new "Kyrie" section starts. Basically excellent motivation, really.
4:56 PM: 7 pages Yes, seven pages, THAT'S RIGHT. However, to disabuse you of the notion that I am actually succeeding in this, I present you with an excerpt of what I have just written. (Know that, when I am writing, I write notes to myself in all caps so that I will see them when I go back and do some editing. I have a recurring nightmare in which I submit a paper and I have forgotten to go through and take out all the side-notes. You will soon see why.)
It is well known in THE FIELD OF WHAT that in many dialects of English the presence of a nasal consonant will raise the vowel it precedes or follows. Pre-nasal vowels will often take on a nasal quality even though English does not have nasal vowels, only oral ones. ALSO I SHOULD CITE THINGS HERE. LIKE PAPERS. OR SOMETHING. The presence of a nasal consonant causes the speaker to lower the velum to allow air to pass through both the nose and the mouth. Through the process of WHAT - ASSIMILATION? ARGH PHONETICS most speakers of American English will leave the velum at least partially lowered when articulating a vowel when it is immediately near a nasal consonant, producing a semi-nasalized vowel. This effect is generally most notable in pre-nasal vowels. UM, THEN I PUT ACTUAL WORK HERE?
Yes, really.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
What happens at Dewey's never goes back to the office
Last night I went out after work with my co-workers to the bar they apparently frequent a lot (they knew the bouncer and bartenders by name, which is always a good sign) and we collectively got what would charitably be termed "drunk in a bonding exercise." It was quite fun, actually, and also completely hilarious. I discussed fountain pens with Coworker S and choirs with Coworker D (she invited me to their next rehearsal, which was exciting!) and the perks and drawbacks of having a semi-androgynous name with Boss B. The non-smokers mocked the smokers, who had to get all bundled up every hour or so and briefly step outside, and at some point someone ordered calamari, which was delicious. The best part of the evening was the stories I heard about the company Christmas party, which I guess is an event nobody ever speaks about mostly because nobody remembers it. There were photos, though - one person said the words "Christmas party" and immediately they all whipped out BlackBerrys and iPhones and Droids to show me some rather incriminating pictures.
Moral of the story: work is good, and these people are hilarious. There is always lots of food in my life (Boss A's sister works for Cake Boss, which is amazing and also means the office is always full of pastry and sweets), and I get to speak French and Spanish with my coworkers and I'm working up the nerve to ask Coworker S to speak German to me, slowly. I've started getting small baby assignments to manage, which is fun because it means I don't have to just sit around and shadow everyone all day, and I'm starting to learn names. Soon I will feel like I have worked there forever, I am sure.
Yay gainful employment.
Moral of the story: work is good, and these people are hilarious. There is always lots of food in my life (Boss A's sister works for Cake Boss, which is amazing and also means the office is always full of pastry and sweets), and I get to speak French and Spanish with my coworkers and I'm working up the nerve to ask Coworker S to speak German to me, slowly. I've started getting small baby assignments to manage, which is fun because it means I don't have to just sit around and shadow everyone all day, and I'm starting to learn names. Soon I will feel like I have worked there forever, I am sure.
Yay gainful employment.
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